6/28/17 - Day 18

Today marks our last full day of our trip.  We decided to end our trip one day early for a couple of reasons.  Our planned last night (Thursday night) would have been at Lake Sylvia, which doesn't have much there except the lake.  Since it isn't hot and likely has lots of mosquitoes we decided that was one we could skip.  The second reason is that we are ready to be home and back to our comforts.  It is bittersweet for sure, and as always the transition back to reality will be tough in some ways.  We have had so much fun, and lots of really solid quality family time - which we so desperately needed!  We definitely had our ups and downs, but we all decided to end on a good note and head home on the 19th day.

So on our last full day, we slid (and ran) down some dunes,
 
 
played on the beach,
 
stopped and had lunch in Cannon Beach, 
 
and made our way up 101 into Washington, 
 
and to Grayland State Park.  They call it Grayland for a reason - gray and cool.  In reality, it's named after Captain Robert Gray who was the first American to circumnavigate the world while trading goods with China, the Pacific Northwest Coast, and British Columbia in the 1700's.  Fitting name, though!  

We had a nice, quiet campsite near the beach.  
 
We built our best campfire of the trip, and talked about some of the highlights.  

  • Best campsite - Sunset Bay near Coos Bay, OR (Henry and Liz), Cove Palisades in Central OR (Chad and Lilly)
  • Best campground bike riding - Sunset Bay
  • Best road riding - Cove Palisades
  • Best trail running - Sunset Bay 
  • Best campsite view - Jalama Beach north of Santa Barbara
  • Best beaches - Turtle Rock, Patrick Point
  • Best showers - Cove Palisades and Nehalem Bay
  • Worst showers - Turtle Rock RV "resort" - remember the run from the sink to the shower to try to get the hot water working?
  • Best family evenings - Nehalem Bay, OR and Van Damme, CA.
  • Best campfire - Grayland fire - it was also the one that took the most effort to start!
  • Number of Disney rides - 11
  • Best Disney rides - Space Mountain (Chad and Liz), Grizzly River Run (Lilly), Soarin' (Henry)
  • Worst Disney ride - Indiana Jones
  • Nights in county parks - 1 in Jalama Beach
  • Nights in State Parks - 9
  • Nights in private campgrounds - 2 (Turtle Rock and Riverside in Big Sur)
  • Nights in hotels - 5
  • Lost tooth - 1 (Henry at Ben and Jerry's in Bend)
  • Lamborghini sightings - 3
  • Trampoline injuries - Lilly in Bend - she was fine.  
  • People arrested - we saw 4 different people being handcuffed on the side of the road (2 separate occasions in Oregon, 1 in California, and one in Washington)
  • Most fun time overall - Disneyland (Lilly), Hyatt house hotel (Anaheim) and their pool (Henry).
  • Total miles - over 3,400!

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